Everything At Once

The Scottish rockers move gracefully onto album number eight. Fran Healy and co. remain faithful to their blueprint—bittersweet and ultra-melodic mini-anthems—but there’s a venerability and warmth to this set, hard-won after 26 years at the coalface of British indie. “Idlewild”—not a tribute to their Britpop comrades but one of the more affecting songs they’ve ever written—features a stunning understated vocal from Josephine Oniyama, while closer “Strangers on a Train” shows the band’s future may lie in lonesome, glacial ballads.